Dissertação de Mestrado em Finanças / JEL Classification System: G38 - Government Policy and Regulation; H54 - Infrastructures;
Other Public Investment and Capital Stock; Over the last few decades, public-private partnerships have been increasable used by
governments all around the world to finance and manage complex operations. However,
doubts about if their efficiency have been raised. Criticism over public-private partnerships
reflects the fact that governments tend to use it just as an “off-budget” operation, to avoid
fiscal constraints. Literature is less than unanimous if they generate Value for Money to the
public sector. How to assess Value for Money in this type of arrangements has became
extremely important for public managers. We believe that the best way to evaluate that is by
doing a public sector comparator prior to the bid. Therefore, it is necessary to account for the costs if the decision is to make it by a public procurement versus the public-private
partnerships payments, and what discount rates to use in order to find the net present value of
the two options, in order to compare and decide which the best decision for taxpayers is. One
of the most important costs to include in a public sector comparator is the risk transfer to the
private sector...

The World Bank support for public sector
reform has grown notably in recent years. To address the
questions of what is working and why in this area, the
Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) has examined Bank lending
and other support for public sector reform in four areas:
public financial management, administrative and civil
service, revenue administration, and anticorruption and
transparency. A majority of countries that borrowed to
support public sector reform improved their performance in
some dimensions, but there were shortcomings in important
aspects. Middle-income borrowers saw improvements in their
public sector quality more frequently than low-income
borrowers, even though the low-income group usually had
greater needs for public sector improvement. Performance
usually improved for public financial management, tax
administration, and transparency, but not for civil service.
Direct measures to reduce corruption, such as anticorruption
laws and commissions, rarely succeeded, as they often lacked
the necessary support from political elites and the judicial system.

Appropriate public sector remuneration
policies are key for performance. They can motivate staff to
a limited extent by rewarding performance but more generally
by eliminating inequities and avoiding frequent and sudden
changes in pay. They can also assist in retaining competent
staff one of the most critical drivers of public sector
performance. Developing pay policy in the public sector is
complex, administratively and politically. This note
analyzes one approach to creating a fiscally sustainable,
equitable and performance enhancing pay policy, the single
pay spine. It focuses on the single pay spine as a means to
help countries achieve four pay policy objectives: 1)
ensuring that public service pay is affordable; 2) achieving
competitiveness with pay outside the public service; 3)
promoting greater transparency in public pay; and 4)
ensuring that there is equal pay for equal work (i.e.
eliminating inequity).

Supporting effective public sector
reform is a major challenge that the World Bank and other
agencies and stakeholders have been grappling with. It is
increasingly recognized that political economy factors play
a crucial role. However, beyond this broad proposition,
specific questions arise: What country contexts are
more/less propitious for public sector reforms and what
reforms are likely to succeed where? And can more explicitly
taking political economy challenges into account help to
pursue public sector reforms even in less propitious
contexts? This paper addresses these issues in two ways:
first, it draws on the existing literature to identify key
propositions about factors that can trigger or facilitate
public sector reforms, and those that tend to work against
(successful) reforms. Second, it investigates the experience
of World Bank public sector operations over the decade
2000-2010. It finds that governments in many developing
countries face incentives to initiate public sector reforms,
but that at the implementation stage...

This paper begins with a review of the
broad motivations behind the New Public Sector Management
(NPSM), including intrinsic differences between public and
private organizations that appear to impact on incentives
and performance. The experience in selected OECD countries
is reviewed where the financing and delivery of health and
other social services is heavily socialized with a strong
public sector role, taxpayers have expressed dissatisfaction
with traditional modes of public sector management, and NPSM
reforms have been hotly debated. Part II of the paper then
describes the NPSM paradigm in terms of three building
blocks that influence the performance of public agencies and
the behaviors of employees who work for them. It explains
how leverage points within the NPSM paradigm are expected to
create incentives for improved performance. It is when all
three building blocks of the NPSM paradigm work together
that synergies are expected to take place, and that
continuous improvements in the performance of public
agencies are expected to be generated over time. Part III
illustrates five organizational strategies that can be used
to introduce NPSM into public agencies in the national
health system. Much of Part III refers to developing country applications.

The purpose of this paper is to outline
strategic options for the reform of the public sector. The
strategic options will be based upon an analysis of the
public sector emerging from the civil war, and a longer
period of deterioration and decline. The strategy will be
expressed in very broad-brush form; detailed planning will
only be possible once the basic strategic decisions have
been taken. Years of corrupt, and ineffective government,
causing - as well as compounded by - civil war, have left
Sierra Leone with poor access to basic services, especially
outside Freetown, with substantial dependence on NGOs.
Expenditure management is weak; there is no effective
accountability; human capacity is weak throughout the public
service; and, the management of policy, and programs is
highly centralized in Freetown, and in the Office of the
President, and the Ministry of Finance. Nonetheless, there
is now a strong consensus in favor of reforming the policy
process, expenditure management, and accountability. And,
there is an ever stronger determination to decentralize the
delivery of basic services. The "options" concern
the rate of decentralization. But...

The purpose of this study was to assist
the Ministry of Labor (MoL), Social Solidarity and Family to
analyze the current public sector pay practices and to
provide recommendations that could be used to strengthen
public sector compensation strategy in the future. This
study was originally intended to focus on all categories of
public sector employees that were not part of the civil
service statute. However, because of problems the MoL faced
in obtaining the central government data on several groups,
the decision was made to limit the study to local government
contract employees. Within that group it includes execution
and management jobs, high and low-skilled positions, and
jobs found in local governments of all sizes. The group is
covered by its own employment statute and so the findings on
pay from this group are not necessarily generalizable to
others covered by different statutes. On the other hand,
the study confirms that some of the problems and weaknesses
found among the civil service can also be found among
contract employees. The study also confirmed that the highly
disaggregated information management and reporting processes
are a hindrance to policy analysis and planning. Although
the individual employment statutes do detail what allowances
each category of jobs is entitled to receive...

This part of the public sector pay
reform policy note represents a summary of main messages and
findings of the report. The report also provides the summary
of simulations for various policy scenarios; it is not
imperative that quantitative parameters of policy actions
(for example, base pay levels, etc.) should be exactly the
same as in the policy note, actual numbers may change
depending on available fiscal space by the time when final
decision is taken vis-a-vis pay increase. Summary of
recommendations is provided in annex two; by the time when
the report was ready for publication, the Government already
took actions to address immediate objectives of the pay
reform agenda in public sector; it issued a decree to
increase pay levels for civil servants, education and health
sector workers as well as other social sector workers. In
general, the decree was consistent with overall immediate
objectives of pay reform in public service. Public sector
wage reform is a key aspect of the reform agenda in
Tajikistan. The strong erosion of real wages...

This study investigates the impact of
World Bank development policy lending for public sector
governance on the quality of public sector management and
institutions. The World Bank’s Country Policy and
Institutional Assessments (CPIA) are used to measure the
latter, the study considers only policy conditions targeted
at improvements in those areas. The analysis uses a
comprehensive country-year panel data set of aid
receiving-countries and finds a significant and inverse
U-shaped effect of public sector conditions on the quality
of public sector governance. For most observed values in the
data, the impact is positive, but it turns negative beyond a
value of 80 conditions. At that point, the predicted CPIA
score is about 0.25 point (0.3 standard deviation) higher
than with zero conditions. For most observations, the number
of cumulative conditions is below 80, so the estimated
effect of more conditions is generally positive. The
analysis corrects for potential endogeneity and shows that
the results are robust to sample restrictions...

[Introduction]:Improving public sector performance has been a concern both within Papua New Guinea and externally, from foreign investors, financial institutions such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and also Papua New Guinea’s traditional bilateral development partners. Because of the poor performance of the public sector in promoting economic growth, good governance and the delivery of basic services,organisations such as the World Bank have included this as part of the package under the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), calling it ‘improving public sector performance’ within the framework of the Public Sector Reform (PSR). This paper discusses three key issues—leadership, the capacity of the bureaucracy to deliver the quality of policy analysis and, most important of all, the degree of political commitment to reform. Papua New Guinea’s experience with public sector reform under the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) are examined in terms of • what have been some of the impacts of Public Sector Reforms under the SAPs? • how has public sector reform supported the decentralisation process and the delivery of services at the provincial, district and local levels under the new Organic Law of Provincial and Local-Level Governments? • what public sector reform has occurred under the Public Sector Reform Management Unit (PSRMU)? What is the level of commitment to public sector reform? • what have been some of the impacts of public sector reform in the line agencies under the previous structural adjustment programs in Papua New Guinea?; Kumul Scholars International papers from the Conference in Canberra...

This paper evaluates whether reforms associated with the New Public Management (NPM) doctrine led to a reduction in public sector expenditure and employees. Savings and downsizing the public sector were a major justification when the international movement of public sector reforms began in the 1980s. Since then, NPM has been the subject of extensive academic debate as to its successes and failures. However, empirical assessments of whether NPM reached its stated objectives are relatively scarce, mainly due to the difficulty of quantifying the impact of such reforms. This paper is an attempt to do this, especially looking at outsourcing and decentralization. We test a number of hypotheses related to the outsourcing and decentralization effects on public sector expenditure and employees through an econometric analysis using a panel data model for eighteen European Countries over the period 1980 to 2010. The results suggest a positive correlation between the degree of outsourcing in the provision of public services and government spending in the short term. On the other hand we find that decentralization tends to decrease the size of general government, particularly in the long-run.

The aim and the reality of community consultation in the public policy process are often at odds. Simple mechanical remedies of consultative models and practices will not in themselves include the citizen beyond the ballot box. This Discussion Paper discusses the findings of a study conducted as part of PhD work in progress that examines two current public institutional trends in the ACT, purchaser-provider public sector arrangements and community consultation. The Australian Capital Territory offers the academic and practicing public policy community a unique opportunity to observe the interaction of old and new trends in OECD public policy best practice. Internationally, ideas about purchaser-provider models have been in place for some time. Current OECD activity is now emphasising community consultation to "strengthen government-citizen connections" in OECD countries and notes that there is now a strong trend towards renewal and expansion of public consultation in regulatory development which is underway in OECD countries (PUMA 1999). The ACT has both purchaser provider arrangements and significant investment in community consultation and provides a practical insight into the interaction of past ideas and current preoccupations in public policy. The Discussion Paper's study has found indications in the ACT that public institutional and reported service delivery arrangements have conditionally resulted in greater government control over the policy process; elected representatives have greater determination of public services...

Accounting standards underpin the preparation of general-purpose financial reports and
facilitate the provision of financial information. In Australia, the accounting standard-setting
arrangement consists of two government bodies, the Australian Accounting Standards Board
(AASB), and Financial Reporting Council (FRC). The AASB is responsible for developing
and maintaining accounting standards, while the FRC provides broad oversight of the
AASB's standard-setting function and gives strategic directions to the AASB.
The fundamental basis on which standard-setting is built is detailed in a conceptual
framework of accounting. The conceptual framework defines the nature, objectives and broad
contents of general-purpose financial accounting. By defining these central issues, logically
consistent accounting standards can be developed by the AASB. The AASB issues a single
set of standards applicable to all reporting entities in the public, private or not-for-profit sector.
These reporting entities must prepare financial reports in accordance with these standards.
This approach is widely known as a 'sector neutral' approach to standard-setting.
In 2002, the FRC gave a strategic directive to the AASB to adopt International Financial
Reporting Standards (IFRS) issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).
The directive meant that from 2005 onwards...

Ghana has developed a "New Approach
to Public Sector Reform", which seeks to focus reforms
on results, particularly the delivery of the
Government's main priorities for (i) job creation and
(ii) food production, distribution and processing. The
impetus for the reform is being led from the center of
Government, by the Presidency and through the strengthening
of collective cabinet level coordination, while recognizing
that implementation will continue to be the responsibility
of the line Ministries that typically already have well
articulated sector strategies. These sector strategies are
largely consistent with two main priorities and are
supported by Ghana's main international partners. The
New Approach emphasizes the need for greater coordination of
the Government's activities, combined with mechanisms
to encourage greater performance and accountability amongst
senior managers, combined with innovative partnerships with
the private sector that could help to ease the binding
financial constraints. This report summarizes the results of
a four-day fact finding mission conducted 4-8 October 2010.
The Report is divided into four parts as follows: Part A -
Short term opportunities: The report welcomes the focus on
delivering specific change in job creation and food
production...

The objective of this report is to
review and recommend improvements to Ethiopia's
approach to public sector reform in order to advise the
Government and executive institutions on the future of its
public sector reform. The report also serves as a think
piece for the World Bank, other partners, and policy makers.
The report provides important basic information about the
features of Ethiopia's public sector reform approach
and reviews what worked well and what did not. It draws
lessons from other countries' experience to help
develop ideas and instruments of future public sector
reforms in Ethiopia. Ethiopia's system of
decentralization process has been credible in devolving
power, improving governance and service delivery well as
narrowing the per capital differences among Regional
Governments and districts. The second phase of
decentralization was 'big bang' and brought some
gaps on addressing administrative and fiscal
decentralization issues associated with: a) detailed clarity
of expenditure and revenue assignments...

This paper examines public sector size
and performance management in post-revolution Tunisia,
drawing on macro-empirical, legal, and qualitative analyses.
The paper first shows that public sector employment figures
and the wage bill have increased significantly since the
2011 revolution, but that this represents merely an
acceleration of the previous trend. The paper then examines
de jure and de facto performance management in
Tunisia's public sector, covering incentives through
recruitment, evaluation, compensation, and promotion. The
examination shows that Tunisia's legal framework is
well-designed for recruiting the most skilled candidates
into the public sector and promoting the most
high-performing employees. De facto, the link between an
employee's performance and evaluation, compensation,
and promotion is weak. Performance evaluation is virtually
nonexistent and promotions are automatic or awarded through
a process that emphasizes seniority over performance. This
is particularly true during the post-revolution period...

How is public sector compensation best
aligned with the market? In industrial countries a common
reference is the salary paid by private employers for
similar jobs (the "jobs approach"). But comparable
jobs are formal, and in developing countries the relevant
alternative for many public sector workers is informal
sector employment. Another approach uses as a reference, the
earnings of similar workers in the private sector,
regardless of whether their jobs are formal, or informal
(the "workers approach"). A potential shortcoming
of this approach is that workers may differ in
characteristics that are unobservable. The authors assess
the importance of this shortcoming, by relying on five
econometric methods, four of which correct the bias from
unobservable characteristics. The authors focus on
state-owned enterprises in Vietnam, which recruited workers
on the basis of political loyalty, and other unobservable
characteristics. A massive downsizing program, which led to
the departure of the most entrepreneurial workers...

This paper uses regression analysis to
identify which country context, reform content, process, and
project management variables predict the performance of
public sector management projects, as measured by the
Independent Evaluation Group's project outcome ratings.
The paper draws on data from a large sample of World Bank
public sector management projects that were approved between
1990 and 2013. It contributes to an emerging literature that
uses cross-country regressions to analyze public sector
management reform patterns. The findings suggest that
political context factors have a greater impact on the
performance of public sector management projects than on
other projects. Specifically, public sector management
projects perform better in countries with democratic regimes
than autocratic ones. They fare better in the presence of
programmatic political parties and in more aid-dependent
countries. Project managers' subjective risk
assessments predict performance in public sector management
operations better than objective risk indicators. These
findings suggest that the performance of public sector
management projects would benefit from a better alignment of
project design with political context and from a more open
dialogue about risk between task team leaders and management.

Public sector management (PSM) reform is concerned with improving public sector results by changing
the way governments work. It is a challenging reform area in which to offer assistance. Sustainable institutional
change often requires that thousands of public agents alter their behavior, and political incentives may be at odds
with improving public sector performance. “What works” in PSM reform is highly context-dependent and
explicit evidence remains limited.
The Bank’s Approach to PSM for 2011-2020 emphasizes that public sector reform is a pragmatic
problem-solving activity, which seeks to improve results by identifying sustainable improvements to the public
sector results chain. The Approach reflects continuing evolution in the Bank's PSM work. It responds to
changing demands from client countries, as well as changes in the Bank's own operating environment, including
opportunities presented by results-based lending and risk management strategies. It puts into practice the lessons
learned from significant progress research has made in recent years in unpacking the nature of institutional
reform. Overall, it seeks to achieve better results by better adapting the way in which the Bank supports client
countries to the distinctive nature of PSM reform.

This note sets out key ideas from recent
discussions inside and outside the Bank on how donors can
support governments more effectively in delivering results
in Public Sector Management (PSM) reforms. This note also
reflects the discussions that have led to the Bank's
new PSM approach for 2011 to 2020; identifies challenges to
reforming public sector institutions; and summarizes how
current thinking on PSM reform strategies has shifted toward
pragmatic problem solving, seeking to improve results by
identifying sustainable improvements for the public sector
results chain.